Oh, I really don't want to hijack this thread and go all philosophical / metaphysical - but are those words actually any more "random" than anything else that's ever babbled? - If every action and every word and every thought is the consequence of the matrix of determinants (as effectively postulated by Laplace in 1814) then could it be argued that these words are "inspired" to the same degree as the words of Shakespeare ?

Are we REALLY anything more than gibberish generators with (perhaps sometimes ;-) more sophisticated post-processing ?

It is less gibberish than a lot I read but it is obvious in my narrow world view it is someone distributing an untraceable coded message without revealing who the recipient is. The recipient knows where to find the message, that is why they use the same thread again and again.

It could be.. It could be the digital theremin development league secretly communicating their plans to eliminate heterodyning!

Or it might be even more sinister - perhaps not a "coded" message, but a subliminal one - Neuro Linguistic Programming targeting the theremin community with the purpose of hypnotizing us to abandon the theremin (which is a great danger to the alien invaders as its the only effective weapon against them).

Fred.

And of course, Keppinger is the arch enemy of these invaders, not only are his theremins heterodyning, but being tube based, they resist EMP!

I guess your latest tube theremin ventures put you directly in the focus of these alien invaders sights, Christopher ! ;-) .. And I think I will stop talking about low-voltage tube circuits - I have enough trouble with earthly aliens (solicitors and "mediators" and estate agents and bankers to name a few of these alien entities who inhabit earth and feebly pretend to be human) without inviting trouble from extraterrestrial ones!

I do hope the plural is just a slipped key! Calling me a spammer or inferring anything of the kind is enough to turn me into a puffy green sulk! "Hijacker" I can just about live with, but prefer "benign hijacker" LOL ;-) But call me a spammer and I reach foe me cutlas and swing me hook an me theremin parrot on me showlder stars te squaak..

But it does bring up an interesting question - your "My question was answered long ago" implies that this thread no longer has a purpose, and is therefore open to 'abuse' by spammers and hijackers, and should be closed.

The thing is though, that there are probably many hundreds of such "unclosed" threads, any one of which could be resurrected by persons who have a genuine posting to make on the same or similar matter, and use a dormant thread rather than creating a new one -

And locking / closing threads isnt going to prevent spammers - unless the core problem of member verification is solved and/or new members must go through a pre-moderation process for their first posts, these spammers will just create new threads.

Should all threads that have not been active for a period of time be automatically closed and archived? This would limit the available "store" of threads that could be abused - but I dont think any useful function would be served by this. I use the "recent posts" function, so all new postings are what appear when I log in - If a spammer has been at work, the screen is full of their threads, sometimes pushing a thread I am interested in off the screen... This is my major "issue" with forum spam - and locking threads will do nothing to solve that!

Finally - threads like this (where the "question was answered") can be fun! Dewster and Christopher's postings above were entertaining - I would never have spotted the hilarious word sequences Dewster did, had he not extracted them, as I have never bothered to read span generator output - I have now started to do this (it could become addictive! ;-)

The only "problem" with hijack of a "dormant" thread is probably that people will read a posting not realizing it is "off topic" - If all benign hijackers got into the habit of declaring a post "Off Topic", then this minor "problem" goes away.

"It is less gibberish than a lot I read but it is obvious in my narrow world view it is someone distributing an untraceable coded message without revealing who the recipient is." - RS Theremin

Fascinating, I hadn't thought of that.

Hmm, and we've currently got holophrasitc over on the "Still seeking a teacher" thread wanting "someone to get me playing the theremin before learning to tune it, connect it, adjust it, et cetera." (Italics mine.)

Have we unwittingly uncovered an Al-Qaeda plot? Remember, the 911 hijackers didn't want to learn how to take off or land, just how to fly the thing - into buildings full of people!